An Artful Dodge by Karen Odden
Gifted mystery writer and Victorian English scholar Karen Odden draws attention while garnering accolades with An Artful Dodge, a novel set in late 19th-century London. Well-trained gangs of elegantly clad women shoplifters, pickpockets and clever thieves are pitted against constables and private detectives hired to protect the growing number of fashionable large department stores. Former boss Maggie O’Connell returns from an Australian penal colony after serving a punitive 20-year sentence for theft to reclaim her position of power and initiate sweeping changes before embarking upon a personal vendetta of vengeance and murder. Although enforced isolation with a brutal husband left her embittered with her innate beauty depleted, it provided ample time to carefully craft plans to punish the partner who betrayed her and carry out a daring jewelry heist.
Inspired by the all-female Forty Elephants gang of London’s Elephant and Castle District, who plied their illicit skills in an England abundant with commerce and widely varied theatrical entertainment, the Victorian age is brought to vivid life.
Karen Odden has deftly captured the vibrancy of the time and underscores the chasm between the wealthy consumer class minority and impoverished majority. The author guides the reader into the parlors and ballrooms of elegant Mayfair mansions and out through the servants’ entrances into back alleys and dark streets near the docks, where one had best not venture alone after dark.
Inside Victorian London’s Criminal Underworld
In 1879, six years after their mother died of drink and their never-departable father was long gone, heroine and first-person narrator Kit Jimeson practices the arts of a nimble thief in order to raise and protect younger sister Sarah. Kit is determined that Sarah, a scullery maid in Mayfair, will remain respectable and has been setting aside her dishonest earnings for a planned departure from the profession prior to probable arrest. Intuitive Kit possesses a quick mind, business acumen and a sixth sense for danger. She has learned two marketable legal trades, having acquired the skills of a versatile seamstress in tailoring, fine sewing, embroidery and beadwork, while also becoming adept at jewelry repairs and the creation of paste copies. She works part-time for dressmaker Emma Kinnon as well as pawnshop owner, jeweler and fence Seamus Ardle. James Kinnon, a reformed smuggler now employed at the Customs House, is three years older than her would-be sweetheart.
For Kit and Mary Pratt, her closest friend and Dodge partner, or “Jenny,” on most expeditions, are the highest earners in the ring, and for them, organized crime does pay. Many of the women are boarders at the Elephant and Castle Inn, whose second story serves as a classroom where up to fourteen at a time practice their “dodges” using stolen goods, including money, watches, jewelry, fine kid gloves, handkerchiefs and other saleable items as teaching aids. During heists, the thief nicks and pockets the goods under the watchful eyes of their jenny, who warns of danger by designated signals and never holds purloined items herself.
A Dangerous Heist and a Deadly Reckoning
It was a nerve-wracking profession requiring working partners to employ disguises to avoid recognition. The punishment for theft ranged widely from a minimum sentence all the way to death by hanging, which leaves little wonder why Kit was ready to quit the racket. When Maggie Wirth O’Connell returns as legitimate heir to former gang leader Patty Wirth, her cousin Amelia Lyle is compelled to step aside. Clearly Maggie is disturbingly more willing than her predecessor to take chances. Moreover, Kit is terrified, as she suspects it was her own mother, Annie, who had betrayed Maggie. To protect her sister, she reluctantly agrees to an extremely dangerous heist in a well-guarded jewelry store where the owners live above the shop. As Kit contrives her own plans, the game is afoot. An Artful Dodge is seasoned with appealing, intriguing characters and a nuanced, fast-paced, and multi-layered plot.
Fans of Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety, which similarly focused on thieving gangs and the remarkable financial acumen of the fences that served them, will take great pleasure in reading Karen Odden’s An Artful Dodge. Her extensive research has yielded a riveting tale that entertainingly illuminates the highly organized professional thievery that existed during this era.
About Karen Odden:
Karen Odden received her PhD in English from New York University and taught Victorian literature at UW-Milwaukee. She is the author of five crime novels set in 1870s London, including her award-winning USA Today bestselling debut, A Lady in the Smoke. Her work has been nominated for the Lefty, Anthony, Agatha, and Derringer Awards, and appeared in Best Mystery Stories of the Year. A transplant from New York, Karen lives in Arizona with her family. Find her online at www.karenodden.com.
